complementarity and equality in the political thought of thomas aquinas

21 Pages·2007·1.92 MB·English

Theological Studies
59 (1998)
COMPLEMENTARITY AND EQUALITY IN THE
POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THOMAS AQUINAS
PAUL J. WEITHMAN
[Editor's note: Aquinas thought that the common good of politi
cal society can be realized only by harmonizing differences
among its adult members. He therefore endorsed a complemen
tarity view of political membership, a view incompatible with
democratic views of political equality. This fact makes it diffi
cult to use Aquinas9s thought as the basis of democratic theory.
Locating these difficulties will help identify where innovations
have been made by defenders of democratic Thomism.]
I
N RECENT DECADES the political thought of Thomas Aquinas had ex
perienced a remarkable renaissance.1 While it has been pressed
into service to underwrite a variety of positions, 2 what is most surpris
ing about this rebirth is the use of Aquinas to support liberal democ
racy. Thus the notable neo-Thomist philosophers Simon and Maritain
mined Aquinas's thought for the foundations of their liberal democratic
theories. John XXIIFs Pacem in terris relied on a premise that is
clearly Thomistic to argue for human rights. 4 The pope's endorsement
of democracy was less enthusiastic than his defense of rights, but he
explicitly stated that a regime in accord with Thomist principles can be
PAUL J. WEITHMAN is associate professor in the department of philosophy at the Uni
versity of Notre Dame. He obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard University. His
areas of specialization include medieval and modern political philosophy. Besides ar
ticles in Philosophy and Public Affairs and Ethics, he has contributed a chapter to the
Cambridge Companion to Augustine (Cambridge University, 1998) and edited Religion
and Contemporary Liberalism (University of Notre Dame, 1997).
1 The ideas in this article were first presented to the Seminar in Philosophy and Law
at the University of Chicago Law School. I am grateful to Martha Nussbaum for the
invitation to discuss Aquinas's political thought, and to her, Richard Epstein, Alan
Gewirth, Richard Posner, and David Strauss for their instructive questions, as well as to
Fred Freddoso, Ralph Mclnerny, and Jean Porter for bibliographic references and help
ful comments; I received useful reactions to earlier drafts from Blake Leyerle, Mark
Murphy, Maura Ryan, Michael Signer, Todd Whitmore, and John Howard Yoder. Fi
nally, I am grateful to Alasdair Maclntyre for making some of his unpublished writings
available to me, and to the Pew Charitable Trusts for financial support during a sab
batical.
2 See Paul E. Sigmund, "Thomistic Natural Law and Social Theory," in St. Thomas
Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, ed. Paul E. Sigmund (New York: Norton, 1988) 180-89,
esp. n. 6 and n. 7.
3 See Yves René Marie Simon, Philosophy of Democratic Government (Chicago: Uni
versity of Chicago, 1951); Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: University of
Chicago, 1951) esp. chap. 5, "The Democratic Charter."
4 Pacem in terris no. 9.
277
278 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
democratic.5 John Paul II, some 35 years later, seems more wary of
democracy than his predecessor, but he turns to Aquinas for a correc­
tive rather than a principled repudiation.6 John Courtney Murray
claimed that American liberal democracy has its roots in the Thomist
tradition.7 Murray's writings are currently enjoying a revival.8 More
recently, John Finnis has given "the modern usage of rights-talk" a
carefully qualified endorsement9 and Robert George has drawn on Fin­
nish work to defend the rights and liberties associated with liberal
democracy.10
The fact that John Paul II condemns policies favored by many lib­
erals, that some of Murray's own contemporaries considered him a
conservative,11 as Finnis also is today conventionally thought to be,
should not obscure the more important point that in the last 50 years
a large and heterogeneous body of literature has emerged that associ­
ates Aquinas with democratic thought and practice. The interest of
this literature is heightened by Alasdair Maclntyre's work. Drawing on
his own reading of Aquinas, Maclntyre defends a politics of localism.
He argues that any modern state, democratic or not, seriously impedes
pursuit of the human good. Maclntyre's implicit critique of the use of
Aquinas to support contemporary versions of liberal democracy, and
the currency of this usage inside and outside the academy, make it
important to determine whether it is possible to use Aquinas's political
thought in this way while remaining faithful to its main lines.
In this article I argue that in fact Aquinas's political thought is
undemocratic. Not only does Aquinas fail to endorse a democratic view
of political equality, but in order to interpret his political thought cor­
rectly one must attribute to him an idea profoundly undemocratic in its
implications. I suggest therefore that using Aquinas's thought as an
intellectual basis for democracy would require a substantial revision of
his own views.
My purpose is not to call into question the desirability of liberal
democratic politics nor to revive Aquinas's political views. Still less do
I question the integrity of work that sees democratic states as consis­
tent with Catholicism or deny that it is Thomist. Quite the opposite.
Interpreting Aquinas's political thought correctly helps us to appreci­
ate some of the backdrop against which modern political thought, in-
5 Ibid. nos. 51-52.
6 Evangelium vitae nos. 68-72; Aquinas is cited in no. 92.
7 John Courtney Murray, S.J., We Hold These Truths (New York: Sheed and Ward,
1960) 41.
8 See John Courtney Murray and the Growth of Tradition, ed. Todd Whitmore and J.
Leon Hooper (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1996).
9 John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Right (New York: Oxford University, 1981)
221.
10 Robert P. George, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality (New
York: Oxford University, 1993) 189-227.
11 See John Cogley's review of Murray's We Hold These Truths, in New York Times, 30
October 1960, section ΥΠ, 42.
COMPLEMENTARITY AND EQUALITY IN AQUINAS 279
eluding modern Thomisms, emerged. It helps us to see where revisions
have been made in Aquinas's thought. This sheds light on what it is for
Thomism to be a living tradition and highlights the originiality of those
thinkers who have made the revisions.
DEMOCRATIC AND UNDEMOCRATIC POLITICAL THOUGHT
In calling Aquinas's political thought undemocratic, I do not mean
simply that he failed to support procedures for political decision mak
ing usually associated with the term "democracy." Instead I make a
claim about ideas, assumptions, and arguments central to his political
thought, ones that could be used to show the preferability of one form
of political decision making over another. To settle the question wheth
er Aquinas was a democratic or a protodemocratic thinker, it is not
enough to point out that he expressed a preference for monarchy in De
regno or for a "mixed regime" elsewhere (ST 1-2, q. 105, a. 1). Nor can
the question be settled by going beyond constitutional matters to
Aquinas's claim that human beings are equally made in God's image
and likeness. Though democrats are committed to political equality,
human equality does not entail political equality; there are democratic
and undemocratic conceptions of political equality. Aquinas would
need to show that the conception of human equality implicit in his
claim that all are made in God's image is political and democratic
rather than not.
What would answer the question of whether a given body of political
thought is democratic is difficult to pin down precisely. As a first ap
proximation, I take it that a commitment to democracy entails a com
mitment to the view that fundamentally differences among persons are
politically irrelevant. This approximation needs considerable refine
ment in order to see its implications for Aquinas's view. Consider what
I call "political membership." Any normative political theory must say
something about the elements of which political society is composed.
The obviousness of the truism that political societies are associations of
human beings can blind us to an important fact. Any conception of
those human elements capable of sustaining normative conclusions
must be spelled out theoretically. Political membership presupposes
the actual or potential capacity for enjoying ends, and for exercising
the powers of practical reason. Theories differ significantly in how they
specify criteria for membership in a well-functioning political society,
in the powers, interests, and capacities that membership presupposes,
and about what status membership actually confers.
How different accounts of membership are specified will depend
upon what different theorists take to be the salient features of the
societies they address. Typically democratic theories proceed from the
assumption that the distribution of liberties, opportunities, and re
sources is largely controlled by their society's governing apparatus, one
that is able to back up its control by a monopoly on justified coercion.
The distributive role of government and its coercive character are
280 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
therefore the features of society that motivate democratic theories in
the first place. To be a member of one's society, according to these
theories, is to have access to liberties, opportunities, and resources,
and to exercise some control over the governing apparatus that con
trols their distribution.12 More precisely, according to these theories,
members of society are citizens. They are coholders of their society's
coercive power, exercised in their name by political institutions. While
possession of this status presupposes that the persons who have it
possess the capacities they need, they are said to have their status
despite differences in the degree to which they possess the capacities
that citizenship requires. Democratic theories are committed to the
egalitarian view of political membership.
I am not offering this view as a definition of democracy. Rather I am
suggesting that it expresses an essential component of traditional
democratic views of political equality. Because democratic theories en
dorse it, they are committed to distributions of political power that we
call "democratic." I cannot defend this suggestion in detail, but note
that it fits particularly well with the contractualist tradition of demo
cratic theory from its origins in Locke to the contemporary work of
Rawls, a tradition that has stressed the equality, often the natural
equality, of human beings. Classical exponents of this view such as
Locke vivified their commitment to equality by appealing to a state of
nature in which natural human capacities were on display. Thus in
Locke's state of nature, agents are depicted as equals in their capacity
to reason; they are assumed to have interests in preserving their "lives,
liberties and estates."13 In Rawl's original position, parties are simi
larly equal and ignorant of differences in their interests. Locke and
Rawls assume that members of society are equal. They take this to
have important implications for distributing political power, rights,
and liberties, and in Rawl's case, income, wealth, and opportunities.
The conditions of the state of nature and the original position enable
Locke and Rawls to represent the fundamental equality of citizens and
to draw out the political implications that place their theories in the
democratic tradition.14
By contrast, in Aquinas's view, members of society are copartici-
12 Here I draw upon Judith Shklar, American Citizenship The Quest for Inclusion
(Cambridge, Mass Harvard University, 1991)
13 Locke discussed the state of nature in his Second Treatise of Government, chap 2,
the phrase "lives, liberties and estates" occurs in chap 9, para 123
14 The original position is introduced in Rawls's A Theory of Justice (Cambridge,
Mass Harvard University, 1971) chap 3 For the position as a "device of representa
tion," see his Political Liberalism (New York Columbia University, 1996) 27 if It might
be objected that Locke's view was not particularly democratic he endorsed a constitu
tional monarchy, excluded women from citizenship and required a property qualification
for voting However, these undemocratic features of Locke's view were due to the fact
that he did not wholeheartedly endorse the egalitarian view of political membership
This was reflected in his characterization of the state of nature as one from which women
appear to be excluded and in which persons are unequal because of their prepohtical
COMPLEMENTARITY AND EQUALITY IN AQUINAS 281
pants in its common good. Aquinas thought that participation in soci
ety's common good requires possession of the interests and possibly
unrealized capacities entailed by an embodied intellectual nature. But
Aquinas does not assume that differences in these endowments or in
the ways they are realized are irrelevant to membership in political
society or to its realization of the common good. On the contrary, he
assumes that there are important differences even among normal
adult members of political society. He argues that realizing the com
mon good depends upon harmonizing these differences so that each
compensates for what others lack, and differences work for the good of
all. He thinks that in a well-functioning political society, members
complete or complement one another. Aquinas therefore endorses what
might be called the complementarity view of political membership.
Aquinas's idea that members of a well-functioning political society
complement one another has profound implications for how he treated
authority and distributive justice. He did not draw out these implica
tions by asking about the conditions of humanity in a quasi-Lockean
state of nature. Thinking human beings naturally social and political,
Aquinas would argue that a condition in which they were unaffected by
political institutions would not be their natural one. He was not inter
ested in the question of what human beings would be like under such
circumstances. He is, however, intensely interested in the condition of
humans without the effect of sins. Aquinas therefore discussed the
state of innocence in some detail. Though he insisted that the state of
innocence was not a state of "pure nature" because of the elevating
effects of grace (ST 2-2, q. 5, a. 1), he treats the state of innocence as
one in which certain natural human conditions and tendencies would
have been present. Among these are natural inequality and comple
mentarity among human beings. In discussing the state of innocence,
Aquinas also drew out the political implications of these conditions. It
is essential not to mistake the state of innocence for a state of nature15
or to suppose that the states of innocence and nature are introduced to
answer the same questions. Still, analyzing Aquinas's treatment of the
former brings to light the political consequences of his complementa
rity view, just as analyzing Locke's treatment of the latter illuminates
the political consequences of his egalitarian one.
Having conveyed a rough idea of what I mean by the complementa
rity view of political membership, I now want to show that Aquinas
holds this view of membership and that it is central to his social and
political thought. Since Aquinas held the complementarity view rather
property holdings. Thus Locke used the state of nature to represent the political equality
of citizens as he understood it but perhaps not as he should have understood it; see
Joshua Cohen, "Structure, Choice and Legitimacy: Locke's Theory of the State," Phi
losophy and Public Affairs 15 (1986) 301-24.
15 See D. E. Luscombe, 'The State of Nature and the Origin of the State," in The
Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University,
1982) 757-70.
282 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
than the egalitarian view about political membership, he did not hold
a democratic conception of political equality. And since complementa
rity is central to his social as well as his political thought, framing a
democratic Thomism would require significant revisions in Aquinas's
position. Still, I argue that the only alternative is to maintain the
complementarity view while trying to avoid its untenable implications.
The attempt to do this requires making claims that Aquinas would
have found difficult to defend and that are impossible to defend today
in light of modern political conditions.
DOMESTIC COMPLEMENTARITY
Allow me to consider an objection. It might be thought that
Aquinas's political thought is obviously undemocratic and that intro
ducing the complementarity view of political membership unnecessar
ily complicates what should be a straightforward argument. Thus it
might be argued that Aquinas cannot endorse a democratic conception
of political equality since the requisite ascriptions of political equality
depend upon an illegitimate abstraction. The most compelling form of
democratic theory, it might be argued, is the traditional form whose
most distinguished expositors are Locke and Rousseau. Traditionally,
democratic theory has ascribed political equality to citizens in virtue of
their natural equality enjoyed independently of their social roles. But
Aquinas thinks human beings are naturally social and political. This
implies that accurate judgments about what is natural to human be
ings are always judgments about human beings considered as mem
bers of a well-functioning society in which they occupy one or another
social role. Thus judgments about individuals abstracted from their
social roles cannot be judgments about what human beings are natu
rally. They must, rather, be judgments about certain theoretical con
structions—namely "political individuals"—that are false to human
nature because they abstract away crucial features of our natural con
dition. Members of society might still be judged equal participants in a
common good which they bring about by performing their roles but, it
might be concluded, this is not the sort of equality democratic theorists
are after.16
The problem with this line of thought is that there is no obvious
incompatibility between holding a democratic view and claiming that
members of political society are equal participants in its common good.
Determining whether there is a subtle incompatibility requires looking
at exactly how members of society are supposed to participate and
uncovering the conception of equality in play. My attempt to impute
the complementarity view to Aquinas is an attempt to do precisely
that. The conclusion that Aquinas's political thought is undemocratic
cannot be established without the sort of investigation I propose to
undertake.
I am grateful to Ralph Mclnerny for his help on this argument.
COMPLEMENTARITY AND EQUALITY IN AQUINAS 283
Alternatively it might be argued that Aquinas could not accept a
democratic conception of political equality because of his remarks
about women, whom he considers deficient in practical reason (ST 1, q.
92, a. 1 ad 2), and about slaves, some of whom17 he thought are ben
efited by their servitude (2-2, q. 57, a. 3 ad 2). But, it might be con
tinued, these are problems that can be easily remedied. Someone want
ing to rehabilitate Aquinas's views needs only to dismiss the possibility
of natural slaves and deny that there are significant differences in the
abilities of men and women.
I leave aside the question of whether Aquinas's views about women
could be altered without significant alterations elsewhere in his
thought. Even if they can be, the democratization of his thought is not
as easy as the argument under consideration makes it out to be. De
spite the objectionable quality of Aquinas's remarks about women and
slaves, focusing on them threatens to obscure a more fundamental
problem with this political thought. To see this, it is necessary to see
exactly what the proper interpretation of Aquinas's remarks about
women and slaves does and does not prove.
I am arguing here that Aquinas thought members of society exhibit
relevant differences in the interests and capacities that membership
presupposes, and that these differences determine the distribution of
political authority. This implies a significant departure from demo
cratic thought. My conclusion would be established by Aquinas's re
marks about women and slaves only if Aquinas thought that there are
no relevant differences among members of society except that between
women and slaves on the one hand and adult men on the other. But
this is not so. Aquinas thought there are likewise politically relevant
differences among adult men. Bringing these to light, and showing
their centrality to his social thought, is a crucial part of documenting
his departures from a democratic conception of political equality.
Aquinas's remarks about women are important for our present pur
poses. Like other crucial notions in Aquinas's thought, that of comple
mentarity is analogical. One would expect that understanding one of
its uses should shed some light on others. Aquinas's treatment of
women, where his reliance on this notion is especially clear, is no
exception. Grasping its use there helps us get a grip on what might be
involved in the complementarity of members of political society and on
how complementarity might ground political authority and subjection.
Since many of Aquinas's most important remarks about women are to
be found in his remarks about the creation of Eve, it is necessary to
turn to his treatment of the state of innocence.
17 I say "some of whom" here because Aquinas uses the word servus to include those in
a variety of legal conditions united by a family resemblance: the slaves of his own time
(to whom I presume he is referring at ST 2-2, q. 61, a. 3), the slaves of whom Aristotle
spoke in the Politics (In Libros Politicorum 1.3), those mentioned in the Pauline epistles
(Super ad Philip 2.2) and those mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures (Expositio in Job
2.2).
284 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
In his reflections about whether women should have been included
in "the first production of things," Aquinas noted that the act of repro
duction cannot be performed by men alone. This is not a defect, as if
human beings would have been made better had they been constructed
for unisexual reproduction. Rather, he argued, unisexual reproduction
would be inappropriate for creatures with an intellectual nature (1, q.
92, a. 1). Thus Aquinas concluded that it is natural (1, q. 92, a. 1 ad 1;
cf. 2-2, q. 57, a. 3) that men should be completed or complemented by
women so that the two "become one through the act of reproduction" (1,
q. 92, a. 1).
This argument could convey the impression that, even among hu
man beings, male/female complementarity is simply physical. Aquinas
hastened to dispel that impression in the very next article of the
Summa theologiae where he argued that men and women do not unite
only for the act of reproduction, but also to enjoy a domestic life in
which men have one set of duties and women another (1, q. 92, a. 2).
Nor did he think this union should endure only until children are
raised to adulthood; rather the union should be lifelong. Aquinas's
discussion implied that males and females have different physical en
dowments that suit them for different roles in reproduction. More im
portantly men and women have different motivational structures and
different emotional constitutions; they are naturally moved to under
take and find satisfaction in the different tasks that must be performed
if a man and woman are together to realize the common good that
Aquinas called "domestic community" (2-2, q. 57, a. 4). The differences
between men and women also include different capacities of reason. As
a result of these differences, a woman is "naturally subject" to her
husband (1, q. 92, a. 1 ad 2), who is her "head" (1, q. 92, a. 2). The
natural subjection of wives to husbands exists not simply for the hus
band's benefit, Aquinas noted. It is to benefit both the husband and the
wife. It can do so, Aquinas thinks, because women need to be subject to
the authority of their husbands to realize their own good. It can also do
so because this subjection conduces to the common good of the house
hold, the flourishing of which is part of the good of each of the members
(for wives, cf. 1-2, q. 19, a. 10).
The extent to which it is necessary to correct this analysis of domes
tic relations is a matter of debate. Some Thomists, such as Grisez,
seem content with its conclusions even if they would offer different
arguments for them than Aquinas did. 18 Others, such as Jean Porter,
have argued for revision of Aquinas's views on women while trying to
remain within the Thomist fold. 19 Although this debate is an impor
tant one, I am less concerned with it here than I am with the key
18 See Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, 2 vols. (Chicago: Franciscan Her
ald, 1993) 2.631.
19 Jean Porter, "At the Limits of Liberalism: Thomas Aquinas and the Prospects for a
Catholic Feminism," Theology Digest 41 (1994) 315-30.
COMPLEMENTARITY AND EQUALITY IN AQUINAS 285
features of human male/female complementarity that emerge from
Aquinas's discussion.
I want to conclude this section by highlighting four of these features.
First, men and women are naturally suited to the performance of dif
ferent tasks in the domestic community and are naturally fulfilled by
different tasks and activities. These differences result from differences
in their emotional make-up, motivational structure, and capacities of
practical reason. Second, the differences between men and women are
complementary so that, other things being equal, men and women
united in marriage can realize the common good of the household, and
thereby realize their own goods, when, and only when, both engage in
the activities for which they are naturally suited and in which they
naturally find satisfaction. Third, Aquinas endorsed what we might
call a complementarity view of membership in the domestic commu
nity. According to this view, the notion of membership in a domestic
community, of being participant in its common good, is defined by
reference to the roles of husband and wife. These roles are defined by
characteristic functions and tasks for which the proper occupants of
those roles are naturally suited. Fourth, since one of these tasks is that
of governing the household, this view of membership has implications
for the distribution of domestic authority. This is a task for which
Aquinas thought men are better suited than women. It is therefore a
task he thought properly constitutive of the role of being a husband. In
performing this task, husbands must direct their households so that
each of the members realizes his or her own good and all realize their
common good.
POLITICAL COMPLEMENTARITY
Aquinas, like Aristotle, was at pains to distinguish familial from
political relations. He argued that political society differs from a house
hold in kind and not only in size (see 2-2, q. 58, a. 7 ad 2). Yet a sort of
complementarity between adult men, analogous with rather than iden
tical to the complementarity of men and women, is essential to
Aquinas's analysis of political society and its achievement of its com
mon good. It follows that, as Aquinas endorses a complementarity view
of membership in the domestic community, he also endorses a comple
mentarity view of political membership. And as he took the former to
have implications for the distribution of domestic authority, so he took
the latter to have implications for the distribution of political author
ity. Thus my suggestion is that these four points have analogues in
Aquinas's discussion of political society. If I can support this sugges
tion, I will have taken a major step toward showing that complemen
tarity is central to the whole range of Aquinas's social thought. Since
his endorsement of the complementarity view of political membership
precludes a democratic conception of political equality, it follows that it
would be difficult to formulate a version of democracy faithful to an
idea central to Aquinas's analysis of social life.
286 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
To see how Aquinas's view of political membership differs from the
egalitarian conception, one should note first that the features of politi
cal society to which Aquinas responds differ from those that are most
salient to the democratic theorist. Democratic theory is motivated by
the fact that the society it addresses is directed by an essentially co
ercive governing apparatus which plays a central distributive role. For
Aquinas, by contrast, the salient feature of what I have been calling
"political society" is that it is integrative.
Aquinas, following Aristotle, argued that it is natural to human
beings to live in what he calls a societas perfecta, a society that is
economically and politically self-sufficient. It is also one in which a
variety of occupations are represented and in which the goods of edu
cation and culture are realized even if not widely available. Aquinas
thought it natural to human beings to live in such a society because he
thought that only under the conditions it provides can they realize the
range of goods natural to them. Aquinas would argue that there are a
number of analytically separable contributions that a societas perfecta
makes to the realization of these human goods. One is that a societas
perfecta enables human beings to live above the level of mere subsis
tence. More important, Aquinas thought that human beings can real
ize their good only if they participate in various forms of association
that are not naturally self-sufficient, prominently including the family.
He also thought that if the forms of association to which a given person
belongs fail to flourish, or if they if do so but without the person's
contribution, then that person thereby falls short of his or her good.
Contributing to and enjoying the flourishing of these forms of associa
tion is an important part of the good of each of the associates.
A societas perfecta contributes to human well-being by making it
possible for these various human associations, including the family, to
function well and to achieve their natural ends. Part of what it means
for a societas perfecta to function well is that it conduce to the flour
ishing of these various associations and their members. But as the
relationship between persons and associations is reciprocal, so too is
the relation between persons and associations on the one hand and a
societas perfecta on the other. The good of these associations and their
members consists in part in their contributing to the proper function
ing of their political society. To be a participant in the common good of
political society is not simply to enjoy that good; it is also to contribute
to its realization. The proper functioning of political society brings
about an integrative good whose realization consists in the ordered
realization of a set of goods that includes the goods of society's con
stituent persons and associations, the conditions that make the flour
ishing of those persons and forms of association possible, and "civic
friendship," the flourishing of relationships among those who live in a
political society. This integrative good is a common good. It is one that
(ideally at least) is shared in and promoted by the activities of the
members and associations of political society. To be a member of po-